Writings of a strange arts student

Tag Archives: crazy

So I haven’t posted anything here very recently–hell, last thing I posted was a picture of a goat (which I swear is more impressive than it sounds) I drew for one of my sister’s stories.

I don’t think I have quite the steady readership here, but I do write elsewhere (fanfiction, mostly, on Archive Of Our Own, and Fanfiction.net), and I do actually have regular visitors to many of my stories.

Hell, in a world of usernames mostly made or kept from your tweens or drunken haha-this-is-obviously-the-best-idea‘s, I recognize a rather astonishing amount of usernames and profile pictures that aren’t actually of people. (Hahaha, yes, so sayeth Doodled93 with a Halloween costumed selfie to the one side and a picture of my dog on the other. But my username is an adaption of a childhood nickname and the creative use of my birth year, so.)

But the thing is, I have a pretty steady readership in my fanfiction plunges, people I’m surprised to see reviewing/commenting on one story or another because they’re usually commenting on other fandoms I’ve written in, and usually it’s pretty nice. The thing I like about Ao3 (archive of our own, for those not in the know) is how friendly everyone is, and while part of that, I think, is because you have to join a usually quick waiting list to even get an account (whereas there are many dud ffn.net accounts), but also because people looking into fanfiction are generally pretty nice.

Actually care about what you post, the quality you crank out, and people will respond.

I think the most negative comments I get nowadays is from people reviewing for the first time a story I wrote nearly, gosh, 8 years ago now(02/14), and it’s mostly about the overuse of some punctuation.

But the negative comments I get aren’t the annoying ones, not really, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but berating and shouting at me for not having updated one story in a while gets me stressed and annoyed and a bit spiteful.

It’s the stressed part of that mix that I’m going to be focusing on today, but you should really pay attention to the fact that when I get annoyed I get spiteful.

If you’ve read anything of mine before this, of the non-fiction side of things, you’ll know that I’ve had a lot to say about stress. I’ve written about stressful situations, I’ve written about what stress is really like for me, I’ve even just tagged posts as ‘stress’ or ‘stressful’ simply because writing about it gets my anxiety up.

I don’t deal with stress well.

I think I’ve gotten better, in that instead of bottling it up I let it out in bursts to Lexy and internet and real life friends in short bursts, but I still have the avoid-it instinct…

Do you see why it is doubly unwise to yell at me and snark about when I’ll likely update?

Because I’m NOT a writer that can work within a certain deadline, I am simply one that can work within parameters. Hmm, should this story be 10k/chapter, or maybe 5k, or should this be every 7 pages, or… hmm. When should I be updating this, because otherwise the chapter will either go on forever or else never get worked on due to its open-ended-ness.

When I was in a bad way after Ottawa-related failings, I was stressed and unhappy and trying my best to avoid real life and all that comes with that, and so I got quite a bit of writing done.

Because when you’re avoiding real life, fiction is where it’s at.

Or just the internet in general.

I read and wrote a hell of a lot, and was unemployed so I had all the time I could possibly want and/or need, and basically turned all my attention towards plot, character development, 10k long chapters, and taking breaks in-between to finish whole seasons of TV shows. As uncomfortable as it may seem to you, I wallowed in unemployment and a feeling of failure but was 80% oblivious to it because 80% of my day was turned towards fictional drama, and a large part of the remaining 20% was eating and sleeping in.

Now, however, I’m in a bit of a better place, and I have a job.

Full-time even, and for a while I had TWO jobs, at least until current job was like “What would it take for you to quit working other job and come here full-time?”

Kudos to past put-on-the-spot me, because I responded with ‘benefits’, because that seemed more likely than ‘more than minimum wage’.

And now while I have stressy bits of work (working in the produce section of an organic foods store means there’s ALWAYS SOMETHING TO BE DONE, and also manager issues but whatever), I am working full-time.

I can no longer utilize my best writing time (between 10pm and 2am) because I either have work to get to at 7am, or I’ve returned from an exhausting shift that ended at 9:30pm.

So no, my writing is not happening at quite the same pace as it was last year, or even over the summer, but you know what?

Stress is usually the thing that gets me writing, because it is an escape.

Sometimes more than reading, because I am quite literally feeling like I’m in my characters head.

When I haven’t written in a long while, or am blanking on what–or how–to write in a particular story I have yet to update for a while, I experience a bit of anxiety, because I do want to write. I enjoy it. But I stress myself out in a minimal way when I haven’t updated something in a while, because I’m disappointing myself. Not in a ‘you could do better’ kind of way, but more like making plans, looking forward to it, and then finding out that either you or the person(s) you were going to hang out with and do that thing with can’t make it.

Oh, ok. Next time then.

But when I get passive aggressive remarks and pressure from people who, while it’s flattering that they’re enjoying what I’ve written that much, don’t give a f*** what else I’m doing or how much pressure they and their unknowing compadre’s are putting on me, who would very likely feel a bit of camaraderie with the others if they knew (Hah, the author will have to update sooner than expected if we’re ALL shouting at the same time), well.

Stressed.

Annoyed.

Spiteful.

Let’s work our way up, shall we?

Spite, a desire to hurt, annoy, or offend someone.

Leads up to Annoy, irritate (someone); make (someone) a little angry.

And though it’s not in there, anger is part of this too.

I don’t like being angry, I don’t like the way it makes me feel, I don’t like experiencing that boiling in my gut, and I especially don’t like how hard it is to keep it focused on the intended recipient/aggressor. It’s like the difference between being a little peeved and being actually angry is like using two different types of weapons. Being peeved is like your emotions are turned into a laser, easy to point it at the thing that’s causing it.

Being angry is like having that laser pointer turned into some kind of gun that lets out a poisonous miasma. It’s scary, there’s kickback that can injure you, and as soon as it’s out, it’s up in the air. It could affect anyone. Could hurt anyone.

And you know what? If you let me get to know you for 48 hours, within that 48 hours I will have figured out what sort of thing I would have to say to you to actually hurt your feelings, the way that shouldn’t hurt because it’s a relative stranger saying it to you, but hits deep anyways. But I don’t say it. Ever. Because if hearing that it’s that easy to figure out how to hurt a stranger verbally puts you off from ever wanting to interact or even meet me, then maybe it’ll change your mind to hear that I don’t say any of it because I find it very easy to empathize, and I’m selfish enough to not want the emotional backlash of hurting your feelings.

But being actually angry makes that wall in my head of ‘no, you do not say this ever’ seem more like a line, and hey, isn’t it closer than I thought it was, and I bet I could walk right over it, easy as pie.

And that is stressful.

Stress, a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances, makes me want to escape. I don’t like being angry because I don’t like confrontation, and I don’t like actually feeling stressed out because I don’t like feeling like I need to escape.

And I really don’t like feeling like I need to escape from my escape.

There are a few situations that I get into that translate into me not being able to write coherently/well.

Alcohol. I will never be that writer who sits down to write with a bottle of wine (i don’t drink wine but that’s besides the point), or with a beer, and a masterpiece will never have its rough draft written in a drunken haze.

Exhaustion. I can write best when it’s late into the night, but I’m pretty antisocial, and interacting with people is exhausting. This is why I don’t really write well after work, because 1) I’m tired, and 2) writing how character a interacts with characters b-z around them is working socialization muscles that do not have the capabilities for this sort of work. I get steadily more anxiety ridden when I have to talk for a prolonged amount of time, and that makes me stressed, and makes me want to escape, and it’s hard to interact socially and also escape at the same time.

And I kind of just mentioned it within ‘exhaustion’, but Stress.

Because if you missed it,

It is hard to interact with anything when all you want to do is escape.

So yeah, this is 1700 words of unhappiness at how some strangers on the internet are making something I enjoy, something I like escaping to, into something I feel like I need to escape from.

Well, from what I can figure out, most of these numbers are significant ages to be, either to parents or to society or to you, as you are at that (or before that) age. It is from these ages you compare yourself to your younger self.

A baby turning 1 year old is a landmark in aging. But, like with dogs and pets in general, it’ll probably be until that baby is close to or past the 2 year mark before your age will be measured by years consistently, rather than by months.

If you ask Lexy how old Gwynn is, she will respond with “Almost three” or “Three in March” but once, for a while, she used wild numbers like 13/14/15/… months old.

It was a strange time that made me have to think a moment as I subtracted 12 from that number, and then… wait no, that would make him…

Ah.

(You redevelop math skills like this when you get a pet, or a baby, by the way. You don’t realize how much simple math you’ve lost until this time comes)

Turning 3 seems like an important age to me, as it is the first year after you’re two, giving you one full year of being referred to by year-age rather than by month-age. I don’t have a baby, and Gwynn is not yet 3, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you any other significance, except that maybe at the 3 year mark Gwynn, and possibly babies in general, will have learned a few new tricks.

Perhaps he will have learned not to go ape-shit over cats.

Unlikely, but a hopeful possibility.

5 seems to be that age that you’re constantly hearing/reading/seeing children being thereabouts. They are either almost 5 or are corrected to that they are only 5, not six for a couple of months yet. Or, they “Justh turned thixth”(say with clear lisp) and have likely lost a tooth. 5 is that age that you just want to BE. You never hear about your inner 4-year-olds or 6-year-olds. That’s because 5 is infinitely better than either of those.

Because you’re FIVE.

Later in life you will find out that you like fives even better, especially when learning your times tables, and find out that multiplying 5 is even easier than multiplying by 2’s.

But enough about 5’s, let’s move onto 7.

7 is important for a number of reasons, and not just because Voldemort had 7 Horcruxes and you always forget the last one or two from the list you try to keep in your mind, and not just because it was one of the most important numbers I learned because Mom sat me down and had me learn the days of the week. This was when I once thought that it was the weekend on a Wednesday based wholly on the fact that the alarm hadn’t gone off. 7 is important because you can finally leave 5 behind.

The memory of 5 is an immature phantom of a memory, filled with scuffed knees, grass stains, hair pullings and crying for no good reason. You have moved past the age of 6, even, with all the reminders of being 5 being brought up, and you are now free to luxuriate in your maturity and lording your advanced age over those stuck in the vortex that happens around 5.

Writing down your age becomes a skewed checkmark of age and maturity, writing it in letters gives you the chance to write a ‘V’ for something other than ‘GIVE’, and you take something from that and maybe think if there’s a number out there that has an ‘X’ in it, or maybe a ‘Z’ because you really don’t get to use those that often.

Of course, Lexy has a friend she’s known from childhood whose name is Aziza.

I doubt she had thoughts like these.

(I think I stopped having this wonder for the letter ‘Z’ when I realized fully that one of my middle names could be spelled with a ‘z’ and decided to spell it as such, and it was only in the past couple of years that I have confirmed that on my birth certificate the possible worry of being an Elisabeth Rose was left for the certainty of being an Elizabeth Rose. Because I’m trying to be as honest as I can be while on the Internet, I’m going to admit that for a while there I think I was overzealous and decided I was an Elizabeth Roze)

(It made sense at the time…)

While moving on to 11 I am going to stop for a moment and take away the notion that 9 or 10 are important figures.

9 is a multiple of 3 and while it may seem mysterious by being almost as hard as your 7 times tables, it is not. You are past the smaller vortex (in comparison to 5) of 7 and are next to the little ball that is 10.

10 is insecure but vicious. If 9 tries to pull weight, it simply rolls over and squashes 9 with the fact that 10 is better than 9. 10 has 2 numbers.

It’s Double Digits.

9 can’t get past that. If you’re 9 YOU can’t get past that.

You must remember here that I’m not making up personalities for numbers, this is how I half remember/half imagine a child’s mindset is like. I wrote a great deal of my Harry Potter fanfiction “It’s Green” going on this, and managed to get a number of reviews on my realistic and odd young Harry… Which is flattering, but also makes me think that I won’t be able to write the personality of anyone over the age of 11…

And that would suck.

Back to numbers.

10 is insecure because while it has lorded its double digits-ness over 9 and occasionally 8, it IS right next to 11.

As grand as entering the double digits of age is, it’s not nearly as awesome as moving past that pinnacle to a new height of age.

11.

10 has the misfortune of having a zero in it.

Zeroes, as we have been taught in school, means nothing.

10, as great as it is, is written down as a 1 and a 0, a something, and a nothing.

11 has the amazingness of being the first number in the double digits that doesn’t have a 0 in it. 11 is also when you leave all the 9’s behind, because you are beyond being 10 and have no time to play with babies. Because that is what anyone is if they are still stuck within the limitations of the single digit of age, at least compared to you.

12 year olds matter nothing unless you yourself are a 12-year-old with other 12 year olds, or you are a 12-year-old who knows or encounters a 13-year-old.

Because, a 13-year-old was once… not a teenager.

But is one for the next 7 years or so.

(it’s hard to shake that image from The Adult’s minds)

Yes, when you turn 13 you are experienced in the ways of the double-digit-age enough to be accepted into the ranks of teenagerhood.

I imagine it’s very much like being accepted into street gang. Or maybe the Mafia.

It’s dark, it’s dirty, you are going to be introduced to a whole slew of sights, experiences, smells that you would have liked to be spared from, you will meet people who you may not like but are now part of different rules, ones that will remember you if you report them to the authorities of the Parentals… the ones from their district or yours, it matters not, they will remember and do their best to repay in kind or else find some other way to return the favour.

They will shank you for your candy…

And give bald-faces lies to the Adults about what happened, and you can say nothing.

I know (for the most part) that that’s not how it works, not exactly, but if someone can come up with a better example of what you are getting yourself into by unknowingly agreeing to join this… group… well. Feel free to step forward with your own post, and link me 🙂

But, regardless of your newby status, Parents will expect just a bit more from you, as the Responsible Teen you are, perhaps playing on your sense of new duty and responsibility to get you to do more around the house, set a ‘good example’.

This is an important stage in your life.

The next is 17.

I think that people will think that 16 should be one of Those ages, but aside from “Sweet 16” what is there, really? You can now get your driver’s license… Wonderful.

Due to new laws (at least in Ontario) you must wait a full year after getting your G1 to get your G2. You will be 17 when you are even remotely close to getting your real license.

17 is important for more than this real license, though, and it’s the reason why, in Canada at least, 18 is only really important if you’re in (or, I guess, beside) Quebec.

17 is when you’re preparing yourself for the fact that you will soon have to take the consequences for things that may or may not get you into serious trouble.

18 is when you are putting to use all these thoughts or concepts of responsibility, but 17 is for where you can get paranoid.

It’s about this time when you also have to start thinking about the Future… about University and College, what your major will be, what you want to do with THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

It’s scary.

Feel free to feel paranoid.

Be afraid.

It’s be a whirlwind, gale forces of GRADESGRADESGRADES whipping around you, sharp rocks of EXPECTATIONSEXPECTATIONSEXPECTATIONS will give you shallow cuts that sting, and you’ll be desperately trying to stay near the eye of the storm.

You’ll be desperate to stay there, because there’s always that possibility that the winds and rocks will chuck you any which direction, and you could land anywhere.

It’s not likely it’s going to be a place you like.

A few will actually be able to stay in the eye of this storm… until they’re turning 18 that is.

Those who have been struggling to stay near the centre will have gained endurance, will have scouted were they could land, and will have calmed down some by this time, but those who were suddenly jolted from their place at the Eye…

17 is the slightly more significant time, I think, and if you think it’s actually 18…

Well, of course you’d think so.

17 is desperately gripping at 18 and trying to stay grounded in that shit-storm as drama and grades get thrown around in school, jobs and money problems biting at tender unprotected areas like vicious mosquitos, and 18 is freaking out.

17 has already screamed itself hoarse, why else would 18 be louder?

For those who have later birthdays, it IS 18 that’s scary, but I’m talking from my own experience, so stick with me okay?

19…

Well 19 is scary.

And fantastic if you happen to live somewhere that the drinking age is 19.

Like, perhaps… ONTARIO???? Or Canada… (I live there, whaddya know…)

I was in luck while in Ottawa in that Hull (sketchy part of Quebec, drinking age 18, sketchy party/club central for the underages of Ottawa), in that for the few months before my birthday I could get alcohol, and afterwards I could still go out drinking with my friends whose birthdays were in Oct-Dec, and so were less than legal in Ottawa.

(I’m not saying anything about having an apartment-style res and being legal in a group of under-aged friends. Also, yes, 2+2=4)

But yeah, 19 means first year uni/college, or else it means succeeding in surviving first year, or not.

(Me? Kind of not, but I’m working on getting back in that tipped canoe, it’s a bit hard, but I’m doing it)

It means you’re trying to find the friends you’ll likely be closest with for the next four-or-so years, making connections, keeping your head above water and clothes the least wet…

Stressful.

But a very important time.

20…

Well, I’m only turning 20 now (Happy Feb 3rd everyone! Happy Birthday to me!), so I don’t know how it’ll pan out, but I have hopes.

I feel like I’m significantly more mature (Maybe… My mom would laugh, as would Lexy and maybe just about everyone who knows me), but it could just be because now I can say “I’m 20”

Because hell yes! I’m 20!

But on the other hand… I’m two decades old.

I feel like I should be whipping out cocktail dresses and be brushing off cobwebs at the same time.

This is said because of the two decades thing…

It’s not two centuries, no, but it’s a bulk unit of time.

Seconds, Minutes, Hours=Nothing.

Days, Weeks, Months= the make up of a year. So?

Decade= Impressive. That’s a bulk unit of time, the likes of which you haven’t been able to process by the time you’re 1 decade old. You have no idea.

Literally, for em, since i think I was still spelling ‘idea’ as ‘ida’ because I thought the ‘de’ in ‘idea’ was satisfied with just the letter.

No idea, I tell you.

(only Ida’s)

2 decades= 2 FREAKING DECADES! That seems like a lot! That’s MORE than ONE!

WOW!

Whoever can count their age by more than one decade is obviously super OLD!

And now I’m part of that group.

I’ve been kicked from the Teenager-Gang and have joined the Decade Group.

I don’t know what it’s going to mean for me, and I don’t know what it’s meant to other people…

First of all, for more on dog training and on general dog-related things, I would go to my Sister’s blog HERE because with me in university, she has quite a bit more contact with our pooch now.

Gwynn is an Aussie-doodle (australian shepherd and poodle mix) with a good temperament, plays well with dogs, and has an unfortunate habit of going batshit crazy over cats.

When visiting relatives/ family friends who have cats, he will go absolutely bonkers to get to them t play.

Cats are a new species to him, a strange and mysterious one that he ha never had the chance to play with before.

To him, they are like leprechauns. Ones that you (and it seems like only you) see every once in a while. It is very confusing for him when he sees a cat on the porch of some house, or walking down the street, because he wants to play with that cat so badly, an it doesn’t seem as though Lexy or I have caught sight of the Leprecat, even though it’s RIGHT THERE.

This is a bit of a bother to my sister and I, and to the rest of the family, because it’s very hard to have a nice family visit with the Dog there acting like a cat addict going through withdrawal symptoms while we wave cats in front of his face.

We aren’t, by the way, waving cats in front of his face.

BUT to hep stop him from going through this act of apeshit crazyness, we have worked on training him out of it when we can.

I managed to take a video of it a while back, when we were going for a walk and happened to see a cat hanging out on the porch of one house.

Here is what happened.

To explain the training a bit better, we are trying to train Gwynn to get into the habit of thinking that when he sees a cat, he should sit down and look to Lexy (or, later, whoever is holding the leash).

Since the cat was there, we had him sit down next to Lexy and he would get a treat every time he looked up at my sister.

We didn’t have a clicker on hand with us, so when he looked up at my sister she said “yes” to indicate what she was giving him a treat for. He looks up, “yes”, Treat.

That way, if he looked away before my sister managed to get the treat for him, he wouldn’t get confused and think he was getting the treat for looking at the cat.

This is working somewhat, but since it’s rare that we find a cat willing to stick around for us to stand there and play this training game, it is slow going.

To give you an idea of why, exactly, we would like him to at least calm down a little in regards to cats, it isn’t just for social reasons.

When walking, if we don’t see the cat before Gwynn does, he will lunge towards the cat with the probable hope taht if he can just get to it fast enough, they could be friends.

This usually results in my sisters arm to get jerked (painfully, as it has happened to me as well), and risk loosing grip of his leash.

This is not good.

If anyone has any other suggestions on how to teach your dog to be calm around cats, please feel free to mention, and please check out my sisters blog for more 😀

I believe she has a section describing the training classes that she (and I, earlier) have gone to, and other training tricks of hers.

Also feel free to share any funny walking stories. I think that this kind of training can be done for squirrels as well 😉

During my last year of high school, most of my friends when on a ‘kpop’ frenzy.

I, at the time, thought that kpop was a band. K. pop. Kpop. Like NSYNC. But foreign.

It sounds like it could be a band, right? Well, to everyone who also thought that it sounded like a possible band name, it apparently isn’t.

Kpop, is Korean pop.

My friends also mentioned a number of different bands, suggested for me to look up and listen to since I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about Blah and Blahdeblah and Bloodegit and Bleesh and Young Blearggy as well as the other Gibberish names that burst from their mouths too quickly.

One band, which I remember because I could actually remember the name back then enough to look it up (and be disappointed), was SHINee.

Well, the difference between back then and now is that this time my friend sent me a number of links to look at and click at my leisure, and got to listen to actual music and not think my friends were crazy for a bit.

Back then, since nothing was turning up when I searched “Shiny music” other than glittery sounds. There was also “calming soothing music” that sounded like the composer was trying to make sounds that might sooth my fluctuating aura.

I was unimpressed with my friends and their taste in music for a little while before deciding I have better taste in friends than that, and therefore was probably looking up the wrong “Shiny” than their “SHINee”.

So I was that quiet person at the table when that conversation topic came up.

Oh yeah, sure I heard that one song, didn’t much like it as that other song you were talking about earlier… yeah, that one. No wait, or was it another one? I don’t know, I listened to it on a playlist, and it was labeled useful things like “Track 01” and “Track 02”.

What? No I’m not lying… I really do like Shiny. That is how you pronounce it right? Yeah, see?

So yeah, I went out of my way to make sure my friends just wouldn’t ask about it, mainly by lying with ignorance, but they were worse than when I was much younger and everyone else was going gaga (a funny term to use nowadays) over the Backstreet Boys.

Or was it Boyz?

Whatever, I missed out on THAT fad by not being interested in much any kind of music and listening to Queen’s greatest hits…

But I missed out on getting the embarrassment out. I missed the deadline, and now life is smacking me in the face with something more than Backstreet Boys. More than NSYNC. Something I don’t even understand!

And now I have a band crush.

I’m in love with SHINee…

Perhaps, when Life was trying to decide what I would get my band crush on, it wondered what kind of music, what genre… and then it saw that I like anime and manga and most things foreign… and decided kpop was the one.

At 1:45 or so that thing is really cool, and the guy in front makes a funny face 😀

They also, if you’re interested, make japanese versions of a good deal of their songs… HERE for the same song, in Japanese. Same dancing, different outfits, and that scene where the one guy makes a funny face is gone, but instead he gets a funny hat 😀

*sigh*… and they’re all so cute too…

At least Life hit me with a band full of eye candy 😛

RESPONSIBLE eye candy as well.

SHINee gets pulled into doing a show, called “Hello Baby”… They get a kid and have to take care of it. That’s the point of the show… It’s REALLY FRIGGING ADDICTING TO WATCH! Watch it HERE

*sigh*… This is mainly just to lament the fact that I no longer have a life, and am now very close to remembering each of their names, and knowing the general sounds and sort-of-recognizable words from some of their songs…

I am the best by 2NE1 : This one is funny and may have bum bratatata tata tata ta stuck in your head for a bit 😀 Fun video as well… not my fav, but it’s impressive what they do in such high heels… also funny horn hair at the end XD

PONPONPON : You will think that the person who made the video was on crack, but honestly as soon as you get past the bizarrenness, you will be giggling up a fit at the ridiculousness of it all 😀 So funny 😀

I also heard that Super Junior is good, but I’ve been trying to limit my band crushes for this next while.

So there’s a huge burst of Kpop for your system, if anyone has suggestions for me, SUGGEST THEM!

Also, if your excuse to not watching or listening is lack of understanding, I mentioned my watching series with subtitles for a reason. You CAN get subtitles, or even look up translated lyrics 😉

I realized as I was rereading what I posted before this that Insanity can be mean. A real bitch sometimes, actually.

Insanity is usually pretty fun, even if it’s more than unwise to listen to her. Or him, if you’re a guy.

But Insanity is also the one who creates doubts. Insanity is the voice niggling at the back of your mind, poking at your fatty brain tissue, making fun of your frontal lobe from their position from a dark corner. Insanity is the one to convince you that those people you walked past? Yeah, the ones who were just laughing?

Yeah, they were laughing at YOU.

Why? Because you’re STUPID and UGLY and WEAK. You look like pussy today, and that guy who just handed you that thing you dropped is thinking you’re a stupid bint.

What’s a bint? You’re so stupid, it’s something that sounds like a british person would say it. a british person probably HAS said it.

British people are cooler than you.

You shouldn’t try to fake an accent, even as a joke though. Because that’s RACIST!

Insanity is the one who also convinces you to do embarrassing things. Especially when you’re not paying attention to Sanity.

It’s a great idea to try to lick your nose right now.RIGHT NOW. Now see how far you can stick out your tongue. How long is that thing anyway?

You can Dance. You’re a great Dancer. DANCE ALREADY! See, everyone’s eyes are on you, you’re fabulous!

HAH! Trip on air!

You should tell a joke. How about “You just dropped your pocket.” Tell someone that. Now.

Lets paint our hands… then sleep.

Insanity can be fun, yes, but without Sanity alert enough to help our regular mentality filter through the ideas for the good and bad and maybe later, Insanity will lead you to a room you don’t want to be in.

That room will either have bars or a lot of padding on every wall.

In this mysterious room, you will also be given ‘fun’ new clothes. One has extra long arms and straps all over, and the other is classically portrayed as black-and-white striped or Orange.

You don’t want to go to this room.

Listen to Sanity, please.

Don’t wear Paint(ed on) Pants.

Don’t scream randomly in class, no matter how curious you are to see what would happen.

Don’t stay up to all hours of the night unless you have NOWHERE TO BE for the next (at least) THREE DAYS!

I have had a total of 2 roommates before coming to university and gaining 3, and it was a mix.

Signs of crazyness are fairly obvious... My last roommate was obviously crazy.

I don’t know much about my 3 roommates right now, other than the excessive shedding-and-not-caring-ness of one, and knowing what their majors are (business, law, and science, and me, in fine arts :|), so this post will be about my first roommate, who wasn’t crazy, and my second roommate, who was.

It would be fair to say that actually, my first roommate was Emma, but she’s my sister. And it happened when I was younger, so…

Yeah.

N was my first roommate, in Rangers. The rooms were small, didn’t have a door because it would be a fire hazard, and was set up with a bed, shelf, and hanging closet bit on either side of the room. N was great, though in the way that everyone seemed to get roomed, she and I weren’t very similar, were in fact very different, and the only real complaint I ever really had about her was that she would come into the room and immediately take off her shirt and strut around in her sports bra. Lexy once told me of her friend no-pants Alex, who was called that because as soon as he got home he would take off his pants, regardless of who was over, and strut similarly around in his boxers. N was like that too, but I feel that there is a difference. N had gigantic boobs, and complained about them often.

Hm.

But I mainly want to talk about my roommate from this summer, the one who shared a room with me for the two months I worked at Grundy Lake.

She was insane.

Insane in a fairly quiet way, but made her insaneness known within the first ten minutes of knowing her, before I had even finished unpacking. She’s insane in a way that makes you go “Whyyyy?!?”

Ten minutes in to unpacking, while my parents have gone to grab another box from the van, and she looks up from her own organizing, and mentions, in a casual voice “Oh, you should know, I got an abortion about 2 weeks ago.”

On the outside though, I look at her and say “Um, okay? Good for you…?” What else am I going to say? WHAT would you say to someone who tells you this? I’ve known her name for less than an hour! Then, she ups the crazy.

“Oh, I didn’t want to have the abortion, but the babies were already dead inside of me.”

Excuse me?

“Um…”

Insanity, by this point, is on the floor laughing, and can’t get the breath to say anything, and me and Sanity are looking at each other and at this girl and thinking about how this girl will be sleeping in the same room as me for the next 60-odd days… oh boy…

But then my parents come in, and so the crazy is hidden away again, or at least she doesn’t really speak after that.

When walking down to the main gate to fill out some paperwork with a couple of my co-workers, one asks who has gotten the abortion story so far.

At least she isn’t restricting all of her crazy to me then…

She also, by tat point, had been talking about how her phone could go up to 50 feet under water, and how it could also then be shot ot of a cannon and still be usable. The girl at the store showed it to her, by putting it in a bucket of water and by throwing it on the ground. Bull.

I now have the same phone as she has, an Android Smartphone, and no, it will still be unhappy and broken under water, and I have a case around it because I’m not going to throw it on the ground. My phone will take enough abuse from me with out me testing for its aquatic abilities and shooting it from a cannon.

So I have a crazy, story-telling roomie… huh…

Later on in the summer, she tells me more about the abortion (I did not bring it up, and was in fact in the middle of reading). She admits that she was more than a couple of months along, and that she would have had twins, if she hadn’t had the procedure.

No really.

“By the way the doctor said that if I have a nosebleed, call the ambulance because I could die.” More crazyness O_O

She then goes on to talk about how it was her fault for getting the abortion, and her boyfriend has just texted her saying he wished she hadn’t. This boyfriend, by the way, is not the guy who knocked her up. She is now feeling guilty, but the babies were dead already with holes in their lungs. She says she thinks it’s because she was smoking.

Smoking while pregnant.

Holy Jeeze, she thinks that it’s because she was smoking while drinking.

Really.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last saw her, and thinking back, I still have No Idea how I could have responded any better than the “Really”, “Uh huh”, and “Hmm” responses that I ended up giving when she decided to share.

I sometimes think that perhaps if I had stayed silent, MAYBE she would have dropped the idea of telling me of her crazyness. Maybe.

Occasionally we would have normal conversations, talking about what kind of work we did (Thank God we had different jobs– me in Maintenance and her as a Naturalist), and she took a lot of trips, either to her house which was like 20-30 minutes away, or she would go with her boyfriend, or she would go on an out trip with the other Naturalists… Entire nights without the worry that I will hear aout boyfriend troubles, about her worries about her post-abortion figure, about how she didn’t fucking swear….

Yeah… Normal roommate, and then the crazy roommate, and now I have three…. one of which is hairy and shedding.

But at least they all seem normal. And I haven’t heard any I-Don’t-Need-To-Know stories.

I mishear many things when having conversations, and more often than not it isn’t because I’m getting old and losing my hearing, even though I’m not even 20 yet.

Wind, Hats with flaps over the ears, cars, traffic, trees, distracting things, music, people, and mumbling are all old frenemies of mine. Friendly enemies.

Because of that group I have had many conversations that has lead to much laughter, and a bit of going off topic, but it has also made me seem insane on more than one occasion.

“Hey, did you want to go to the park later?” A friendly question.

“What?” Startlement. Shock. Experience that says that they should be repeating what they said before I call the cops.

“Um, Did You Want To Go To The Park Later?” Unsure, and curious.

“Oh, sure! I thought you said something totally different! I thought you’d said ‘did you want to bury the body later?’ hah!” Relief. Confusion that my friend is backing away slowly.

I eventually developed a way to distinguish what people are actually saying from the insanity that my mind replaces their words with, but I feel it also caused me to develop something often seen in cartoons.

You know, the little cartoon Angle and Demon that poofs onto the characters shoulders? One suggesting you do the Right Thing, and the other saying To Hell With It! HAVE FUN! BWAHAHAHA!

But I don’t get the hallucinations, don’t worry.

Instead I have a small division in my mind with my Insane Side and my Sane Side.

Insanity translates what she hears to something she finds more interesting, shouting out to my consciousness what is being said.

Sanity Listens, writes down what is said, and then says what was actually said.

My Insane side is hunched over and grinning madly, giggling occasionally as the rest of the world goes by and fiddling with its thumbs. Occasionally Thumb Fights break out. Insanity only occasionally pays attention to the world outside of my head since it finds it so boring, but makes an effort to make it a little less boring by giving translations to what other people are saying to me. Of course she does it out of the goodness of her heart. After all, her heart was drawn onto her shirt really well, and even Sanity mentioned that it was pretty good.

My Sane side sits off to the side reading a book and listening to the outside world, a notebook off to the side. She occasionally looks up at Insanity to check what she’s up to, and often times writes down what she’s muttering to herself and her thumbs, and sometimes what she’s doing. Sanity makes sure that when Insanity pays attention to the outside world, she doesn’t try to affect it. When she does, Sanity writes it down and tries to fix whatever she’s done.

Sanity likes Insanity because Insanity is interesting, and writes down what Insanity does to laugh over later, and oftentimes what is in that notebook ends up in dreams and in my imagination. Sanity, as funny as it sounds, is my inner-novel-writer, even if she is a bit obsessive compulsive.

Insanity only likes Sanity when Sanity is being interesting, or when she’s managed to yell out translations loud enough to confuse Sanity and make her say “Yep, that’s what I heard as well… CONFIRM BEFORE CALLING COPS!” Insanity guides my hand when I’m drawing, and gets distracted easily, so my picture of a cow quickly turns into something abstract and awesome in a way that a normal bovine creature cannot be unless it is a CREATURE. Because of this distraction though, she also regularly finds new and more interesting things to think about, and is the voice in my mind saying “Lets do something else now… We can finish this later, kay? Bwahahaha…”

I will likely draw these figures before long, and will post them here once I figure out how to use the scanner on my printer…

Until then, I kind of picture them like Waldo and Odlaw (Odlaw, for those of you who don’t know, is Waldo’s brother.)

See? Two sides of the same Turtle.

See?

Oftentimes, even after I’ve finished getting over the fact that the person I’m talking to has not, in fact, invited me over for a Nazi party (:O), or jokingly called my a nipple (:S), or even asked me if I wanted to bury the body later, my insane side will still be muttering about how I should be worried, because They only corrected themselves because my reaction said that I don’t like Nazis and I would be a joykill rather than a jewkill at the party, and they called me a nipple because they have a malformed nipple that looks like a person–perhaps even like me personally–and They figure they can tell me about the body later, after they’ve buried it in my back yard.

This sometimes leads to more miscommunication, as my actual consciousness is busy laughing over the ridiculousness of what Insanity is muttering, and Sanity is too busy writing down what is being said to pay attention. Sanity likes to analyze these things later.

All in all, it leads to some interesting conversations, and an interesting mental picture of what Sanity and CRAZY would look like, as well as a kind of inside joke with my sister and a few friends who I’ve mentioned my sane and insane sides to.